Climatic Dances

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About the Production

Climatic Dances is the name of the fifth volume of the Endangered Human Movements*, a long-term research carried out by choreographer Amanda Piña on the current loss of planetary cultural and biological diversity.

Climatic Dances explores the way the notions of earth have transformed through time and through different historical genealogies and ontologies. In this piece the biographical landscape of the artist, a particular mountain in the central Andes in Chile, which is today being destroyed by Neo-extractive forces, becomes a place from where to share grief and fury, to mourn and stand up. Climatic Dances is an embodied visual effort to practice new ancestral ways of relating with the living world. 

* Endangered Human Movements is the title of a long-term project, started in the year 2014, focusing on human movement practices which have been cultivated for centuries all over the world. Inside this frame a series of performances, workshops, installations, publications and a comprehensive online archive are developed which reconstruct, re-contextualise and re signify human movement practices in danger of disappearing, aiming at unleashing their future potential.

Authors

AMANDA PIÑA is a Mexican-Chilean-Austrian artist and cultural worker living between Vienna and Mexico City. Her work is concerned with the decolonisation of art, focusing on the political and social power of movement. Her works are contemporary rituals for temporarily dismantling the ideological separations between modern and traditional, the human, the animal and the vegetal, nature and culture. Amanda Piña is interested in making art beyond the idea of a product and in developing new frameworks for the creation of meaningful experiences.
Her pieces have been presented in numerous renowned art institutions, and she danced and performed in pieces by many acclaimed artists.
She studied Painting before going into performance and movement based art, Studied Physical Theater in Santiago de Chile, Theater Anthropology in Barcelona and  Contemporary Dance and Choreography in Mexico, Barcelona, Salzburg (SEAD) and Montpellier. In 2018 she was awarded with the Fonca Arts grant from the Mexican Government. Since 2013 she is a certified Feldenkrais practitioner applying the method to movement research in performance, installation and video. She finished the international postgraduate studies in curating in the performing arts at the Salzburg University.
Since 2008 she leads the gallery space specialized in expanded choreography and performance nadaLokal in Vienna which she founded together with the Swiss Visual Artist Daniel Zimmermann.

MICHEL JIMENEZ studied Mechanic Engineering in Santiago de Chile (USACH) and Applied Arts in Vienna (Die Angewandte). He holds a master in Digital Arts (Die Angewandte).
His work is not concerned with his individual authorship but focuses on collaborative practices in which the focal point of his attention are the processes leading to the integral construction of an image, be it in film, video, installation or live arts.

From the Reviews

“Piña shares the philosophy of this mountain people: all life is interconnected, and everyone shares the responsibility for our planet. She opposes ecocidal capitalism. The performance is both an ode and an indictment.

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The metaphysical power of ritual dancing. All movements are extremely controlled and slow. Like a landscape that develops over time. Some things grow, others disappear. In a stream of consciousness she reconstructs the inspiring power of tribal movements and dance techniques.

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In 'Danzas Climaticas' there is room for sadness, anger, mourning and resistance.”

Viviane Redant, https://klassiek-centraal.be